Born in 1950 to a Shiite family in the town of Nabi Ayla in the Bekaa Valley. Al-Sayyed graduated from high school in Beirut, and then from the Lebanese Military Academy in 197 He joined the Lebanese Army’s First Brigade in the Bekaa in 1976, and took control of its intelligence branch the following year. In 1984, he was appointed as chief intelligence officer in the Bekaa Valley, and then deputy chief of the Lebanese Army’s military intelligence in 1992. In 1998, then-president Emile Lahoud – a staunch ally of Syria – appointed al-Sayyed as the head of Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security, a  position which he held until 2005, and during which he used his position to quash any opposition to Syria’s domination of Lebanon. He resigned in 2005 due to suspicion over his involvement in the murder of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, and was held in prison for four years.